Has your organization seriously considered
implementing a career development program?
If not, perhaps this is a good time to do so.
The following description of several, widely used
career development interventions and
case studies can be used to stimulate
discussion on various career development
practices.

One approach to alternative career pathing
involves incorporating the skills employees
already have with what their hearts want to
do. It can involve changing career and
lifestyles for more meaningful and fulfilling
work arrangements. Creating
alternative career paths often involves
incorporating other career development
interventions, such as flexi-time or job
enrichment. Alternative career paths should not be
confused with dual career paths, which is
described later.

Career Pathing

Career pathing, also called career tracking, is
a process of outlining an individual career
plan, usually within an organization. Career
pathing is most often used as a part of
management training and development,
although individuals may develop their own
career track, either alone, or in conjunction
with a career coach.

Employees follow pre-determined steps
along the career path to develop expertise in
managing different types of organizational
situations and to reach their
career goal. Periodic checks evaluate progress,
as well as determining what further training or
experience is needed to move to the next step.
Career pathing often uses several other career
development interventions as part of the
process. These include cross-training, job
rotation, job enrichment or enlargement, and
temporary assignments.

Dual Career Tracks

Dual career tracks should not be confused
with alternative career paths. Creating dual
career paths involves preparing employees to
succeed and be rewarded without necessarily
being on a management or vertical
organization career path. In other words,
``up'' is not considered the only way
employees can grow and advance within the
company. The establishment of dual or multiple career
tracks has proven to be an effective way to
retain and motivate valued employees.

Management can be an attractive career
alternative for many employees, but it is not
for everyone. This may be particularly true for
many technical or creative workers. The
number of people managed often
distinguishes managerial levels, but under the
dual career track plan, individuals apply their
expertise (like managers) to tasks of greater
complexity and impact within their specialty
field.

For example, they may make
recommendations in a wide range of business
areas, participate in high level decisions, and
act as mentors to other employees. The interest in dual or
multiple career tracks is likely to grow as more
organizations do away with formal
management titles and establish team
structures.

Career Coaching/Counseling

Career coaching frequently involves helping
individuals prepare for a career change or
helping employees advance in their existing
jobs. From the employee's view, career coaching
consists of evaluating interests, values, work
styles, and skills. From the organization's
view, it consists of matching employee talents
with organizational needs, recruiting and
retaining talent in the company, identifying
training and development needs, and assisting
employees in specifying and locating new
employment opportunities within the
organization.

Cross-Training

Cross-trained workers are taught skills
outside their current job assignment so they
can be called upon to perform a variety of
tasks as the need arises. Many workers and
supervisors find themselves cross-training
each other, just to make the day-to-day work
life manageable. As a career development
intervention, however, companies put into
place a formal program of cross-training.

Cross-training helps organizations to
balance workloads so everyone is busy, and
allows the company to respond quickly to
employee absences. It also allows employees
and departments within an organization to
gain a better understanding of the ``big
picture'', and to improve communications
and relations. Employees who are cross-trained
are more valuable to the company,
and more marketable in the work world
overall.

Flexitime

Flextime is one of the most popular and most
widely known career development
interventions. Flexitime gives employees the
opportunity to balance their work and
personal lives by restructuring the typical
workday to accommodate individual
employee schedules. Employers
who offer flexitime often report decreased use
of paid leave, decreased tardiness and
increased productivity. Other benefits for the
employer include a low-cost method of
providing personal time off and extending
service hours without overtime pay. This
career development intervention
is popular with employees who have extended
families or young children, who may be facing
``burn-out'', and those seeking further
education or pursuing second careers.

Flexitime allows employees to set their own
schedules, within limitations set by
management. For example, workers may
adjust their starting and ending times, but are
required to be at the office during
management specified core or peak hours.
Working four ten-hour days is an example of a
compressed workweek form of flexitime.
Flexitime may also be combined with other
interventions, such as job sharing, job
rotation, and phased retirement.

Job Rotation

Job rotation is the systematic movement of
employees from job to job within an
organization, as a way to achieve many
different human resources objectives : for
simply staffing jobs, for orienting new
employees, for preventing job boredom, and,
finally, for training employees and enhancing
their career development.

Job rotation is often used by
employers who place employees on a certain
career path or track, usually for a
management position, where they are
expected to perform a variety of duties, and
have a variety of skills and competencies.

Job rotation is often confused with crosstraining.
While both interventions perform
essentially the same service of providing
employees with a varied set of skills, job
rotation goes beyond this. Besides being used
as a means of management training, job
rotation can also be used as a form of job
enrichment, by adding increased
responsibilities, increasing challenge, and
reducing boredom or burnout.

Job Enlargement

Job enlargement is defined as increasing the
number of tasks a worker performs, with all of
the tasks at the same level of responsibility,
and is also sometimes referred to as
``horizontal job loading'' . Be
careful not to confuse job enlargement with
job enrichment, which will be discussed later.

Job enlargement and job enrichment can
both be used with plateaued workers or
workers who are experiencing burnout, and
with especially high achievers. These two
interventions may be used in conjunction with
each other, or with other career development
interventions such as job rotation and
temporary assignments. Both interventions
provide the employee with increased skills,
making him or her more valuable to the
company, or more marketable in the job
search.

Job enrichment involves increasing a worker's
responsibility and control over his or her
work, and is also called ``vertical job loading''.
Job enrichment allows you to
expand your responsibilities or change your
role to develop new competencies without
leaving your current position or the
organization altogether.

Job enrichment is also used as an effective
motivational technique. According to this perspective, if a job provides a
sense of responsibility, a sense of significance
and information concerning performance, the
employees will be internally motivated to high
levels of performance. The key to creating this
situation is to enrich jobs so they provide five
core characteristics: task variety, task
significance, task identity, autonomy and
feedback.

With job sharing, a full-time job is split
between two employees. The two employees
share the duties and responsibilities, as well as
the salary and benefits of the job. These two
employees must also work closely together,
and with management, to co-ordinate hours,
duties, and communication among
themselves and other departments in the
organization. Most often, job sharing is used
by parents or adults caring for their parents,
and affords employees a better balance
between their work and personal lives.

Employees pursuing further education or a
second career may also use job sharing.
Job sharing offers advantages over part-time
work in that employees are able to maintain
their professional status as well as some of
their job benefits. One example of the
advantage over flexitime situations is that with
flexitime, parents may still require extended
day care hours. Benefits to the
employer include having ``two heads instead
of one'', retaining valued and experienced
employees, and down time due to vacation or
sickness is reduced, because the job share
partners cover for each other.

Phased Retirement

Organizations typically devote far more
energy to recruiting and retraining than to
phasing out workers. Phased retirement is one intervention that
workers and employers can use at the latter
end of the career cycle. During phased
retirement, workers gradually taper their work
schedules until they reach full retirement.
Other career development interventions such
as flextime and job sharing are typically
incorporated into phased retirement
arrangements. Retirees may work part time
and serve as mentors or trainers to their
successors. Benefits to employees include a
greater sense of control over the transition
from work to retirement, lowering the risk of
economic insecurity, and more social support. The employer
benefits by retaining valued talent and
minimizing labor shortages.

Source of Reference:
James Kirk, Bridget Downey, Steve Duckett, and Connie Woody, Name Your Career Development Intervention, Journal of Workplace Learning Volume 12, Number 5.